Hawaii Relief Map

thingiverse

A relief map of Hawaii's Big Island is based on NOAA's digital elevation model (DEM) - hawaii_6s_20070806.asc. The data set contains 3,000 rows and 4,200 columns with a 6 arc-second distance between points. To create the STL file, a 200x200 array sampled at 30 arc-second intervals surrounding Hawaii was used, setting points below sea level to sea level value. The highest peak in the model rises about 20mm above sea level, while Mauna Kea, Hawaii's highest peak, stands at 4,200 meters above sea level. NOAA offers a portal for finding similar datasets (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/dem/demportal.html). The map was printed directly on the build platform using three shells for smooth peaks and a Fortran program that outputs an openSCAD polyhedron command, allowing openSCAD's thrown-together debugging feature.